


Chiropteran

by Roselightfairy



Series: Finding a Voice: OCs and Extras [6]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Elven Acrobatics, Elves are Cats, Gen, M/M, Minor Violence, Mirkwood, background Legolas/Gimli, they always land on their feet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28174479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: The development of an unusual – and essential – Mirkwood training maneuver.
Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin)/Legolas Greenleaf, Legolas Greenleaf & Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Finding a Voice: OCs and Extras [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2054061
Comments: 12
Kudos: 35





	Chiropteran

**Author's Note:**

> This story emerged solely for my desire to think about wood-elves swinging through the trees. It technically takes place in my _Finding a Voice_ 'verse, but hopefully it can be enjoyed even without background knowledge of the OCs, if Mirkwood elves take up as much space in your brain as they do in mine.

“Stay close.”

Conuingoll’s whisper hardly tickled at the edges of Legolas’s hearing. Within the bounds of their realm, it would not have carried at all; the slightest breeze would have dissolved it before it could reach even an elven ear.

But here, there was no breeze. The trees made no sound or motion at all, save a trembling beneath the surface: the slow, dull struggle of song against smothering. Legolas did not need the order: he suppressed his own shiver and shouldered closer to Eleniel. Her arm was solid against his, the reassuring nudge of leather; she pressed back.

It was silent again in the wake of Conuingoll’s voice – too silent, but no, not silent enough. The ambient noise Legolas had always known – the constant shifting chorus of murmurs beneath the melody of his own spirit – had been stifled, choked to nothing. He could hear too well and too poorly, for in the distance he could also make out the raucous sounds of a band of orcs in their camp – preparing, no doubt, for more raids on the Woodland Realm – but where the noise should have been louder without the rustles and murmurs of the forest to hide it, even those noises were dampened, strangled by this unwholesome magic.

“Slowly,” breathed Conuingoll, and they crept forward.

They kept close to the ground for now, tiptoeing beneath the lowest-sweeping boughs of the surrounding trees. This close to home, their only foes were the spiders, which made their nests in the trees. In fact, they had passed a nest on their way here, but Conuingoll had ordered them to leave it alone – they would note its location to be targeted later, but they had a mission now and stealth was their priority. Orcs did not work with spiders, they were _fairly_ certain, but any disturbance might make their position known, and that they dared not risk.

This was not Legolas’s first mission, but it was his first time out so far beyond their borders. They had passed out of the realm some hours ago and the air grew darker and thicker with every step. Legolas had never fully understood the protection of their realm before, but he knew it now in its absence; the smothering of the song. His armor felt flimsy defense against such a menacing emptiness.

They traveled yet on the ground but soon, he had been warned, they would take to the trees again and then would need to be quieter and more watchful still – spiders might await them up there, but the orcs awaited below, and they were the greater threat, for they were certainly allied with the dark power within the fortress. This close, they had been warned never to speak his name, and Legolas’s thoughts shied away even from thinking it. Again he pressed his arm subtly against Eleniel’s, reminding himself that she was there. It was both of their first mission so far beyond their borders – only Conuingoll’s third time leading this patrol – and he was glad they were together for it.

They kept so close, all of them, so quiet, that they could nearly feel one another’s breath – merging into one creature, one mass of arms and legs, arrows bristling like spines from their quivers. So close, so unified, that when Conuingoll stopped abruptly, not one of them so much as jostled hir.

Ze said nothing. Only raised a hand high enough for them all to see, then jerked it diagonally upwards. _We climb_.

They shifted, in a motion practiced so often Legolas now felt he could do it in reverie, and they were in the trees.

They made more noise here – could not help it. The paths were not as clear as those where Legolas had practiced. He had been warned before, when they went over this plan again and again, that they would not be, that the trees did not know them here – and he could feel it now, another comfort only obvious in its absence. Where the forest knew him, it spoke to him – leaves swaying unnoticeably out of his path, warning him where to turn. Here it was denser, more difficult to navigate, harder to be silent.

But still they were wood-elves, and this was _their_ wood, however corrupted and sickened. Still they moved.

They were too loud at first – rustling the leaves, jostling one another despite their best efforts. But like their march on the ground, they found a rhythm eventually, and the patterns began to resolve into something. The song was not loud here, not even audible to Legolas’s own soul, but – there was _something_ there nonetheless, a motion for his body to settle into, a familiarity even in the strangeness. Around him he could feel his companions catching it, too, and then again they were moving in synchrony, a single being.

Muffled as they were, the sounds of the party ahead grew louder as they drew near. Legolas could not make out their speech, but the edge of cruelty in their voices made him shiver to his bones. Scents too were dampened here, but his nose detected the hint of smoke from live wood – they had hacked living branches to build their fire – and something else, something bitter and acrid, curling slowly through the air.

He frowned, trying to identify it, and Eleniel nudged him. _Poison,_ she mouthed.

Ah.

Struggling to ignore the sudden churning in his stomach, Legolas sprang from his chosen branch to the next tree, landing as quietly as he could. As if he could somehow have forgotten, amidst all the horrifying unfamiliarity of all this, the unnatural silence, that this was all real –

Poison.

His mouth dry, he crept on.

Too soon, and yet not soon enough, the orc party was within their sights. There were many of them – so many more than the sounds had led Legolas to believe, clumped together about their fire, sharpening weapons, turning meat on spits. Laughing – that same cruel-edged laughter – as one of their number toyed cruelly with a still-living squirrel, dangling it by the tail in a way that sent a hot flush of anger to Legolas’s face. The only thing that stopped him from leaping out at them immediately was their number – four times at least the number of elves who hovered over them in the trees.

But that was why they were here – that was why their party had been sent rather than any other: for stealth rather than open combat. They would have time for only one volley of arrows before their opponents returned fire, if that, and they must use it wisely.

Legolas remembered the word Siril’s spies had brought: that this camp was only the first, that there were more forces ranged behind. Their job now was to provide warning: to target this first camp and move on to the others if they could – and to bring back word of their foes they could not.

Conuingoll thrust hir hand up and out, making a quick series of gestures in a fanlike shape, and they scattered. Eleniel’s weight vanished from the branch behind Legolas as she leapt higher, and his stomach swooped for more reasons than just the change of balance. They had practiced this formation so many times, but it was different to feel her leave his side in the face of impending battle. It was all he could do to fight down the instinct to turn and follow her, to stay as close as he could.

But no – no. He caught his balance and remained where he was, watching and listening as the rest of their patrol scattered around him, spreading out into a rough semicircle around their foes’ camp. Once all were prepared, they drew their bows.

It was a position that Legolas had drilled for hours every day, had been ordered to hold until he thought he could hold it no longer and then to hold it two breaths longer than that. He could dream in this position now, his body took to it so naturally – crouched on a branch, one foot in front of the other to hold his balance, his shoulder straining against the draw of his bowstring. But he would not dream now, not as he sighted down his arrow, selected for his first target the orc still toying with the poor half-dead squirrel – no, he could not be more awake.

They would not rely on visual cues for this signal – not when eyes might be turned in the wrong direction, and not when Conuingoll had also drawn hir bow and sighted a target. They all heard hir draw a long breath – and then ze loosed a piercing whistle, the only warning their foes had before the arrows flew.

Legolas hardly waited for his first target to fall – found himself almost glad of the smothering of sound, the way it muffled the choked death-gurgle as his arrow took the orc in the throat – had only enough time for a brief flash of relief at the sight of the terrorized squirrel streaking off into the trees before he was reaching for another arrow, nocking, drawing, loosing.

But one volley indeed was all the advantage they had. The orcs moved from their positions as swiftly as if they had known an attack was coming. They launched themselves to their feet even as their fellows crumpled, ducking and weaving around one another in a moving knot that made it too hard to track one point to shoot. Their armor was much more visible than their unprotected flesh – yes, the arrows were still bound to strike home now and again, but how to ensure a killing blow? And unlike the orcs, the elves did not use poisoned arrows.

And yet he must shoot into the knot of them, for what else was he to do? Already they were going for their own arrows, edges gleaming with the black sheen that was the source of the poison-stench. The elves were yet covered by the trees, but the orcs did not need accuracy so much as fortune. And if they were near enough to shout for their fellows –

Legolas pushed those thoughts down and away as he had been taught, those fears and what-ifs that overpowered him so easily when faced with a stranger or a better – he could do nothing for them in those moments, but now he could lose himself in the urgency of battle, in the knowledge of his muscles. He found himself thankful for those days of drills, those hours of burning shoulders and thighs, the calluses on his fingers – for now his motion needed no pause for thought, natural as a winding stream: loose, hand into quiver, nock, draw, loose, hand into quiver, nock, draw –

Duck!

An orc had broken free of the knot for just a moment, but Legolas was already loosing at a different target when he saw him; even as he reached for the next arrow, the orc had – without pause – seized a club from a fallen companion and hurled it into the trees, directly where Legolas was shooting.

The throw was not accurate, but it was hard – harder than Legolas had known orcs could throw. It came nowhere near him – at least, not as it had been thrown – but it struck the tree beside him, sending branches flailing this way and that, near enough to tangle with the branches of his tree and set the whole thing to wavering. That would have been bad enough, enough to interfere with his aim, but then in rebounding, the club struck his tree as well, another hard blow to send a shockwave through the tree.

The tree shuddered. Legolas winced for it, but in the moment it was all he could do to bend his legs further, thighs burning, and keep his balance –

Above him, Eleniel was not so fortunate. She had climbed yards higher, where the branches were thinner and sparser – and more vulnerable to motion. Legolas twisted up at the sound of her gasp, watched her branch whip violently to the side, watched her grasp – for a moment too slow with her bow in one hand and an arrow in the other, unwilling to drop either –

She fell.

_“Eleniel!”_

All thoughts of stealth, of protecting his position, were torn from Legolas’s mind as surely as the scream from his throat; he could not have held it back for anything. And yet the cry was worse than useless; there was nothing he could do as she plunged past him – so fast and yet so slow at the same time; he knew she could catch herself, if she would release her bow – but if she lost it, she could not fight; she would hit the ground defenseless and those poisoned weapons would come for her, or she would hit the ground and not move at all – her limbs flailed about in the air, grasping for the nonresponsive trees, and still she did not let go her bow –

And then –

With a great crash of wood and leaves she _slammed_ her legs together around a branch below him. He had taken his eyes from the fight; he saw only his friend, and so he could see her thighs tense, her legs cross at the knees; her body continued to fall, her torso spinning towards the ground as the momentum dragged her downward, but the branch held. Arrows showered from her quiver in a cascading rattle; her long braid dangled like a tail, but her legs remained locked around that branch, and there she hung and fell no further.

She did not move for a moment, hanging yet as though stunned, but from a distance, Conuingoll’s voice rang out. “Legolas!”

The command was sharp as a whip crack, and Legolas snapped back to attention. He ought not to have taken his attention from the fight – it was inexcusable and he would be scolded later, but first he must ensure that there would be a _later_ in which to be scolded. He jerked himself upright and back into position, sank more surely into his crouch.

It had taken only seconds, he realized; the orc who had hurled the club had not yet buried himself back into the mass. He was moving in that direction now – but not fast enough. Legolas narrowed his eyes, aimed, and loosed.

This time, he did not even flinch at the sound.

The club was not the last item to be hurled into the trees – the orcs, it seemed, had passed on what information they could after previous raids and they were prepared for attackers who moved with stealth and shot from above. But still they could not stand up to the elves’ force. When two-thirds of their number had finally been slain, the others ran – in the opposite direction from which the elves had come, doubtless to alert their fellows and to prepare themselves better for the next attack.

But the elves would prepare themselves as well.

Legolas scrambled down the branches as soon as the orcs had fled, forgetting command, forgetting dignity. “Eleniel,” he whispered as loudly as he dared, scarcely retaining the presence of mind not to cry out again. She had clawed herself back upright in the time it had taken for the orcs to flee but had not managed another shot since her fall.

There was an obvious reason for that – one hand still clutched her bow, but her quiver was empty, arrows visible here and there in the branches below. Some, doubtless, had fallen all the way to the ground. But even had she retained her arrows, Legolas doubted she would have shot again. She still clung to the branch, her legs locked tightly around it where she had caught herself, and she had bent forward to hold on with her free arm as well, her chest heaving against the branch as she caught her breath.

She twisted up to look at him when he settled in behind her, though, and managed a weak smile. “I am well,” she said, though the breathlessness of her voice belied her light words. “See? Alive and uninjured.”

“Uninjured, perhaps,” said Legolas. “But are you sure you are not – that looked” – He hesitated. “Painful.”

“That it was.” She grimaced. “I do not fancy trying to unhook myself from this branch, in fact. You may have to leave me here.”

Heat rushed into Legolas’s face – some combination of relief and indignation. “Do not even jest about that.”

“Legolas.” Conuingoll’s voice cut through their conversation. “Eleniel.”

Legolas winced internally, but twisted around, pushing down his thoughts. Whatever scolding he had earned, he would take now – now that he knew his friend was safe.

But Conuingoll only pursed hir lips and jerked hir head to indicate that they should join the rest. The others had clustered around hir, leaving only Legolas and Eleniel on their branch. Legolas ran his eyes over them one by one – all present, all unharmed. Then their mission had been, in some ways, a success.

And in some ways not.

Legolas held out a hand to Eleniel and she grasped it hard for support as she unlocked her legs from the branch and pushed herself upwards, hissing as she shuffled to her knees. “Ah,” she grated, following Legolas with careful, mincing steps to where the others were gathered. “I would not be surprised if I find myself unable to walk at all tomorrow.”

“Then you may count yourself fortunate, for we will be home by then,” said Conuingoll. “We will not be pursuing.”

He ought not be so relieved at that thought, Legolas supposed – but as he looked around, it seemed he was not alone. Lachor’s shoulders sagged in relief; Alweden let out a long sigh. And Eleniel’s grip on his hand slackened before she gave a hiss of pain and tightened it again.

“They were readier for us than we had hoped,” Conuingoll continued. “We suffered no losses this time, but if they have returned to strengthen their forces, our pursuit might be met by an ambush, and it would be too much to hope for the same fortune. You all have been out too few times to be prepared for more of a fight than this; to have managed this raid without losing any of our soldiers will count as success enough for now. It is best, I think, to return to our borders while our foes recover from their losses. And of course we must bring back our reports.”

“Reports?” said Damion.

Conuingoll nodded. “Of their knowledge of our forces, of their new tactics, and” – Hir eyes came to rest on Eleniel, and ze gave just the ghost of a smile – “a few new drills for our warriors to practice.”

* * *

Gimli son of Glóin had seen many strange things in his life. He had met hobbits the size of children who could outdrink any dwarf; he had witnessed a challenge between two wizards and had walked beneath the boughs of the oldest forest in the world and spoken to trees. He had even seen an elf give his blessing to his son wedding a dwarf.

But never, he thought, had he seen anything stranger than wood-elf games.

The rules of this one seemed, as best he could tell, to be as followed: all the elves would scatter in the trees and hide as best they could, but no one was allowed to stop moving for more than a few seconds. Meanwhile, one elf – at this moment Damion – would pelt the others with tiny fruits. If you were struck, you must chase the person who had thrown the fruit, and he must continue targeting the others even while attempting to flee pursuit. Whoever was the first to catch him would be the next to throw.

Gimli could not understand how this game was enjoyable to play; it would not even be particularly entertaining for him to watch, not when the elves meant to stay hidden at all times, if they did not so often fail gleefully in their concealment, laughing with delight and heckling one another with creative Silvan insults.

“Gimli!” cried Legolas, surfacing gaily from a clump of trees and turning towards him for just a moment. “Are you sure you do not want to join us?”

Gimli snorted, and a tiny fruit came whizzing through the branches towards Legolas’s head. With a whoop of laughter he vanished into the boughs again, shouting something a moment later that could only be a taunt to Damion’s aim.

Gimli laughed and settled deeper into his seat to watch and listen.

Soon enough another burst of laughter drew his eyes to a particularly tall tree some yards away. Eleniel had climbed high in the branches – so high that it made Gimli dizzy to watch her – and Damion called something at her that Gimli did not understand.

But Eleniel responded in plain Sindarin, doubtless for Gimli’s benefit. “You think so!” she called. “But you have forgotten something!” And even as a fruit soared towards her from Damion’s tree, she let go of her branch.

Gimli actually shot to his feet as she dropped, as though from a distance he could do anything to help her – as though he did not trust her to know what she was doing! And yet, for all he had seen wood-elves leap so easily about in the trees, he could hardly watch as she tumbled, arms and legs splayed, streaking like a falling star towards the branches below her – and the ground even farther below that –

Only she did not.

She was too far away for Gimli to truly see what had happened, but one moment she was falling and the next she was not – she twisted in the air, then out of it, and it was only after she had stopped falling that Gimli realized what she had done. Somehow she had seized hold of a lower, thicker branch with her legs alone, actually pulling herself out of her fall with the clamp of her thighs and using the momentum to swing herself back up and around. Even as Gimli squinted into the distance, asking himself if what he had seen was true, she pushed herself upright again and gave a cheeky wave as above her, the fruit sailed into the forest beyond.

“You tried!” she called with a laugh, and then vanished with a flash back into the foliage.

None of them were watching him – no one else had even so much as cried out at the sight of it – and yet Gimli stood there with a hand pressed to his chest, reminding himself how to breathe. Wood-elf acrobatics, it seemed, were just as absurd as their games, and much more unnerving to watch.

Behind him, he heard the sound of shuffling feet – the deliberate noises Legolas sometimes made when he knew Gimli did not want to be startled. He could not turn, still staring at the trees where Eleniel had vanished, hearing another shout of laughter from another fleeing elf, but Legolas shouldered against him and wrapped a reassuring arm around him. “She is fine,” he said.

“I know,” Gimli said. “I mean, I can see that now. It was just” –

“Surprising,” Legolas agreed. “It is a trick we all learned long ago and were made to practice until we could do it without thinking, but Eleniel has always been uncommonly good at it.” He pitched his voice slightly louder. “Doubtless she was showing off for your benefit.”

“She might have given me some warning,” Gimli grumbled. “Unless she takes some pleasure in being shocking.”

“I thought you had learned by now, husband mine,” said Legolas, squeezing Gimli’s shoulder. “We all do. But you are right,” he added, before Gimli could retort with some comment about elven nature. “I think Eleniel does delight in frightening friends with this particular feat.”

Eleniel’s voice rang out of the trees, calling one of the few Silvan insults that Gimli knew (in part because, from what he understood, it was one of the rudest). Unfazed, Legolas shouted something even less polite back.

Gimli chuckled, his heartbeat finally slowing down. One day, perhaps, these elves would take more care for his mortal heart – but perhaps when that day came, there would be far more reason to mourn. Nothing was worth reminding Legolas of Gimli’s own mortality, and that thought made it easier to muster up a teasing smile. “Even you?” he said. “If, as you say, you wood-elves prize being shocking so much, I cannot imagine you ever being frightened so by such a thing.”

Legolas laughed as well, but a little breathy this time, a little wistful. “Believe me,” he said. “You might be surprised.”


End file.
